


In Another World

by snowshus



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 08:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: Sometimes Charles likes to imagine another world. In this world where there was no war in Korea.





	In Another World

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to Karios for going over this so kindly for me and helping to make it readable for you!

Sometimes Charles likes to imagine another world. In this world where there was no war in Korea. Or, if there was, it went much better for—well, either side really, it doesn’t matter to Charles who won. The important part is that it ended early, before Hawkeye was drafted. In this other world they meet normally: at a medical conference; or a seminar for a new development; or maybe Charles does some rotation out a small hospital in Maine to help out, or teach the provincial doctors a new technique and Hawkeye would be among them. Without the relentless grind of the war to wear it out of him, Hawkeye might have gotten bored of small town doctoring and come to Boston in search of more complicated and interesting cases. He’s skilled enough certainly. Yes, in this other world they would meet normally and Hawkeye would be the arrogant prick he undoubtedly was. Charles knows doctors, he’s known them all his life. There is still a small trace of the sort of doctor who thought he was better than God in Hawkeye. In this other world, there would be no war machine to remind them both how very small and futile their attempts at thwarting death are.

In the other world they might have liked each other more, had a more friendly rivalry than the one they have fallen into in the backwater cesspool of this world. It would have been fun. Hawkeye’s skill is something almost approaching Charles’s own. Perhaps in the other world, with the proper mentorship, he could even be better. Hawkeye might be brilliant here in Korea, but they are little better than butchers; Dr. Frankensteins each of them—sewing bits and bobbles of people together in the futile hope that in the end at least one whole person might walk away—only to have them show back up in a week, needing to be stitched together again. He digresses, reality inconsiderately imposing itself on his fantasy, as it tends to do.

In the other world, they would meet normally and they would like each other. From there, they would develop a healthy, friendly rivalry and then perhaps more. Charles would have an apartment in town, close to the hospital—and far from the wife his mother would eventually find for him—and Hawkeye would be consistent visitor. He’s like dog sometimes; he can't let things go. So he’d follow Charles home some night after surgery, ranting or debating some medical quandary. Charles would invite him in, or, more likely Hawkeye would invite himself in, but Charles wouldn’t stop him. They’d drink a normal amount, enough to get pleasantly drunk. Enough to get worse at the risk/reward math that usually keeps Charles from kissing other men. And Hawkeye would kiss back, because this is Charles’s fantasy and because—for all the show he does of ogling nurses and buying nude magazines—he can’t quite hide the way his eyes linger on the curve of BJs neck.

In the other world, because the other world is exactly as Charles’s would like it to be, Hawkeye kisses him back, and stays over, and stays over again and again, and his clothes and personal effects mix in with Charles’s. Sometimes Charles’s imagination can stretch all the way to divorcing the faceless woman, or perhaps even never marrying her in the first place. Instead, he moves into the apartment permanently. Hawkeye gives up his place to live in the apartment as well and that is okay. Sometimes, it only goes as far as a very long, very quiet affair. Either way they are together, their relationship companionable and competitive and electric as it is now, but without the brittle edge of what they have been reduced to. Hawkeye would laugh as often, but without the note of hysteria that keeps creeping in. He would drink on weekends and have the occasional glass with dinner, instead of eternally walking the edge of drunk enough to dull the pain but not the senses. He would be the man he was supposed to be, the one Charles dearly wishes to meet.

The speakers crack right before the sound of choppers fill the air. This world, with all its filth and rot, reasserts itself.

“I’ll be back for you later,” Hawkeye tells his martini glass, and Charles manages to drag up a disparaging remark before they exit the swamp and enter the meat grinder.


End file.
